


Gifts Out of Season

by Neotoma



Category: Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:41:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neotoma/pseuds/Neotoma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betriz, growing into her own. Set during 'Paladin of Souls'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts Out of Season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catterhey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catterhey/gifts).



The days after the Daughter's Day were as usual for Betriz dy Ferrej y dy Cazaril, a bustle of planning and organizing as the Zangre prepared for the summer campaign season. In her postion of castilara, Betriz oversaw the royina's household, including the weavers and seamstresses that equipped the soldiers, the kitchens and storehouses out of which they would be provisioned, and the purses out of which it was all funded.

So when Iselle dropped a letter in Betriz's father's hand onto the table at the close of the privy council meeting, Betriz was only mildly surprised.

"My mother proposes a pilgrimage around Baocia," the royina stated, with a slight bafflement underlying her statement.

"Is that a problem?" Royse-Consort Bergon asked.

"No... it's just that Grandmother is so recently buried. I would have thought Mother would--"

"Want to get away from the grief?" Betriz interjected. "When my mother died, I mourned and I worried for Papa, but I also felt smothered by all the sympathy. I wanted to run into the hills to get away."

Caz gave her a sideways look, and asked, "And did you?"

"Only once," Betriz said. "But that afternoon's freedom from grief made me able to shoulder it again."

"Ah," Caz said, amusement crinkling the corners of his mouth. Betriz wondered what her husband was imagining -- she'd been twelve, almost a woman grown, and that brief wildness had been an aberration. She'd never run off like on her own again -- running off following Iselle's lead had been a duty, as well as a joy.

"I would like my mother to be happier, in this season of her grief," Iselle admitted, "but Ser de Ferrej makes good argument. Mother needs attendants for her station, and her...distractability." 

Caz picked up the letter, and swiftly read it. "A pilgrimage around Baocia seems an easy enough undertaking. Your mother is much recovered from the ills of your youth, royina, and with suitable companions there should be little risk in her own province."

"I remember another jaunt," Bergon said, "with much more need behind it, that your mother supported. A sedate pilgrimage would be less of a tale at the end, but good for her soul's sake?"

Iselle smiled at her husband. "Instead of nerve-racking? Indeed. Betriz, draw a purse for my mother's pilgrimage out of our private accounts, to fund a company for her. If she can pawn jewels to fund one journey that bought me a country, then my husband and I can fund a journey to ease my mother's soul. Caz, find her a suitable captain and company of guards for the road, wherever she might wander."

 

Betriz thought little of Ista's pilgrimage afterwards, except good wishes to Iselle's mother, who had been so deeply unhappy and distracted all the years Betriz had known her. 

Until the news came from Porifors. 

Followed quickly by missives from the March dy Oby and the Provincar dy Baocia.

It was such a confusion, worse than the scattered and contradictory missives from the last two spring campaigns against the Roknari. At least then, there had been no wild accusations of sorcery and fairy tale curses.

"I can scarcely credit this," Iselle said the day all the jumbled missives arrived. She had Betriz attend her at the noonday meal in her solar; young Isara and Betriz's wee Osar were gamboling in the spring garden under the watch of their careful nursemaids.

"My mother... my mother is proclaimed a saint of the Bastard? And proposes to hunt demons in Jokona. My mother?"

Betriz looked over the letters again. "It does seem to be the case. Admittedly, your uncle dy Baocia is somewhat unclear; if your mother is truly a saint as he seems to think, why does he think you can argue her out of that calling?"

"Because she is my mother!" Iselle said. "She is of an age to be sedate, not gallivanting off into the Roknari wilds! Nor hunting demons! Demons, Betriz!"

Betriz bit down on her urge to smile. "She is your mother, royina."

Iselle frowned at that. "Yes, well. I suppose... it's just that she's Mother. She's--"

"Not what anyone expects? Not like the old provincara."

"No, to be sure. She was so... poorly, for so long. This show of fire and spirit is quite unlike her."

"It occurs to me," Betriz said, "that she is like a man recovered from sickbed, and finding that he again can be himself, instead of the invalid he was for so long. It astonishes him, and all his kin, that he is hale again. Your mother has tested her limbs, and found them strong, and now wishes to employ them."

"By hunting demons for the Bastard..." Iselle said.

"The women of your line are none of you timid," Betriz said.

"Well. There is that," Iselle smiled. "And my mother has dropped Jokona into my lap, like a Bastard's Day sweet, all unexpected and unlooked for. It would be rude to refuse."

"Indeed," Betriz smiled.

"I will have to send Caz to Porifors immediately. I need his wits and skill there, and all his diplomacy and sinew. And Palli." The royina frowned, "And Bergon must muster the Son's Order immediately. Whether we can secure all of Jokona or only some small part, we must needs change the thrust of the spring campaign now, and have what we can secure battened down by the Mother's Day, when the warring begins in earnest."

"You think the neighboring princedoms will attack."

"They would be fools not to. Even if it were not us snapping up Jokona, the land is fruitful, the ports are deep and fine, and carving off even a sliver for themselves in the confusion well worth the risk."

"Then I should prepare my husband for his journey," Betriz said. "By your leave, Royina?"

"Go, my good friend. At least this time, you do not have to give your husband your best fur cap?"

Betriz laughed, remembering. "No, this time I need give my husband my best sword, and good linen so that he doesn't boil in the northern heat."

"Go," Iselle said, laughing.

Betriz swept up Osar, his nursemaid, and all, and returned to her own chambers, where she began directing the servants to packing. She had a trip to plan for her husband, after all.

 

It took two more days to assemble all the necessary provisions and implements, and that only because the Zangre's storerooms were enormous and already prepared for the summer campaign.

Betriz herself oversaw the equipage, not just the warm cloaks and linen vest-cloaks against the changeable mountain spring, but the odds and sundries and little luxuries that Caz would find useful -- wax tablets and ink blocks wrapped in oilcloth, pairs of gloves to give as tokens of the royina's regard to nobles, candied citron, and such.

"This is not how I expected to spend these weeks," Caz said, when all his assembly of clerks and court officers were gathered in the Zangre's wide foregate. "I hoped to have your good company until the Mother's Day, and sometime after if the summer campaign went well. But now I am off after a dowager royina who has turned over an ant's nest and discovered sorcerors within."

"I too hoped for more time," Betriz put her hand to her husband's arm. "Do you believe Royina Ista is able to shoulder this burden she has claimed?'

Caz smiled at her, his dear face turned amused and rueful. "The gods grant us gifts that they think we can carry, even when we think we cannot. I remember _that_ well enough."

"She needs must always have been watched over, in my youth." Betriz said.

"And you doubt her now." At Betriz's nod, Caz rubbed his mouth. "It occurs to me, my dearest friend, that you saw Ista only at her worst, when the curse lay heaviest on her and she had no succor. But I was a page in the old provincar's household when she was full in her youth, and she had strength."

"I know that in my head, I even argued for her to the royina, but in my heart I worry, Caz. I told Iselle she was like a man recovered from sickbed, but sometimes men risen from long illnesses collapse again."

"And you worry. For Ista and Iselle both, if Ista wastes under this burden."

"I do," Betriz admitted.

"I have read all the dispatches from the field, and it seems that Ista has much support, not only her brother dy Baocia, but learned divines and officer-dedicats of both the Bastard and the Daughter. And she will have me, in ten days or less. I will shore up any weaknesses in the buttresses of her god-laid task, but I doubt she will need much from me. Ista is wise enough to find her own support," and then Caz's eyes turned impish, "and I think she may have done that already."

"Caz, what do you mean?"

"Reading closely, in what was stated and what was implied, it seems good Ista may have found a good right arm to rely on in her new vocation. A certain officer of Porifors, of good lineage, though not altogether regular in his birth. The late dy Lutez's half-brother, unless I mistake entirely."

Betriz took a moment to turn that over. "Lady Ista? A suitor?"

"She is only forty, Betriz."

"But it's Lady Ista!"

"I'm glad for her, if I read the situation aright. Such sweetness after one's youth has fled is an unexpected gift, and many thanks are rightly owed to the Bastard for such."

Betriz frowned. "You are not so old, Caz."

"I am not so young, either." Caz looked aside to his company. "But now, dearest wife, I must away, or this rabble of clerks and counters will never get underway." He embraced her, and kissed her.

"Lupe dy Cazaril," Betriz said just before he drew away and mounted his horse. "You have left me with a troublesome thought to contemplate, and you did it with deliberation. You are wicked in good humor, husband, and I pray to the five gods your road is safe and fruitful."

"And I pray to the gods that this tangle is just a tangle, not knots to cut. And that I come back to you in good season, my dearest Betriz." With that, he waved, turned his horse, and was away, to find what gift the Bastard had left, up in the mountain of Porifors.

Betriz watched until he and his company was swallowed up in the bustle of Cardegoss, and then went back to her duties. She had the Zangre to manage, and appropriate gifts to find for the Bastard and all the gods, in this season of unlooked for good fortune.


End file.
